This invention relates generally to reading machines and more particularly to reading machines adapted for use by persons with severe visual impairments or blindness.
As it is known in the art, reading machines have been used to improve the educational attainment of individuals with learning disabilities. They have also been used with persons having visual impairment or blindness. In general, known reading machines are computer based. One of the functions of a reading machine is to read aloud to a user, words associated with a document. The document may be an electronically stored document (i.e., on magnetic or optical memory) or a printed document that is scanned into the reading machine by a scanner. Typically, the reading machine scans a document containing printed text producing an image file representation of the document and converts the image file representation into a text file. The text file is fed to speech synthesis software which under the control of the reading machine reads the document aloud to the user.
Although reading machines adapted for visually impaired or blind persons are computer based, since vision is not a significant source of input stimuli for such persons, other approaches which do not principally rely under the user's interaction with the machine through a monitor or display are needed in order to allow a user to control operation of the machine.
Thus, the typical reading machine for a blind person, in particular, will include a personal computer based computer system including a processor disk or mass storage device and a keypad. The system will also include an audio system, but it will generally not include a monitor although a monitor with special magnification software may be used by a person with severe but not total visual impairment. One of the big challenges, therefore, in providing such systems for visually impaired individuals, in particular those with total visual impairment, is to enable the user to easily control the system. In particular, what is needed is an approach to allow sophisticated features to be included on the system keeping in mind that vision is generally not available to typical users of these systems.